


As Good As It Gets

by LittleMissListless



Series: I Wouldn't Mind [1]
Category: The Kane Chronicles - Rick Riordan
Genre: Brooklyn House, F/F, Female Friendship, I feel like I made both characters a little OOC, What Was I Thinking?, slight shipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:59:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6739048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMissListless/pseuds/LittleMissListless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having a side of your life you have to hide is not easy. Jaz has personal experience with this, being blood of the pharaohs and thus an Egyptian magician. The magical side of her life interferes with what's left of the normal side, making it difficult to relate to any of her mortal friends. In the end, one of her fellow Brooklyn House magicians feels like one of the only people Jaz can talk to about both side of her life.</p><p>(Slight and suggested Jaz x Alyssa)</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Good As It Gets

_Merrily we fall out of line, out of line._

_I’d fall anywhere with you,_

_I’m by your side._

 

Jaz closed her eyes, letting out a long exhale as she reached for the ground without bending her knees, the tips of her fingers lightly skimming the neatly trimmed grass. Her long blonde hair tumbled forwards in an attempt to cascade messily over the front of her head, but a blue elastic hairband held it firmly in a tame ponytail.  
  
She always tied her hair up before cheerleading practice, something her coach in Nashville had advised her on doing when Jaz had shown up to her first tryouts with her hair loose. The disaster her blonde locks had been afterward was more than enough to convince her that it was a wise idea to at least pull it into a quick ponytail beforehand. The teenager exhaled slowly, opening her eyes and gradually standing up before continuing the rest of the cooldown stretches the Brooklyn Academy coach was directing them through.

 

Cheerleading seemed like one of the only constants of her old life that persisted after finding the box that told her she was descended from an ancient Egyptian pharaoh that was alive thousands of years ago. It had been integrated into her routine when she was young, Jaz would have to be hard-pressed to give it up altogether.

 

Still, as much as Jaz loved cheerleading by itself, most of the fun was doing it with her friends. Changing schools meant you had to make new ones, and most of the other girls stuck to the friends they'd known through grade school. It was  _very_ difficult to get groups like those to warm up to you enough to let them into their little gaggle, and even then it's hard enough to relate to them. The fact that Jaz couldn't tell anyone that she was a magician capable of wielding magic dangerous enough to kill someone with a word didn't help, as friends expect enough trust to be able to confide in anything. Making a friend among the other mortals at BAG meant she'd have a harder time hiding the magical side of her life, and it was already difficult enough.  
  
"See you tomorrow, Jaz! Great job you did today," a cheerful voice said, eliciting a friendly smile and a wave from Jaz directed at the girl who had called out to her.  
  
"You too Layla, have a good afternoon!"  
  
The other girls on her cheerleading squad were nice people. They had welcomed her with open arms when she had joined them after resuming school with most of the other Brooklyn House kids. Going back to school was intended to be a drop of normality back into their lives after the fiasco that involved waking Ra and defending Brooklyn House from an evil attack force of Chaos magicians, but sometimes it only served as a reminder how removed from their old mortal selves they were. As it was, Jaz rarely saw the other girls on her cheerleading squad during school hours and the other Brooklyn House kids (whom she'd at least be able to more fully relate to because both of them would be aware of the other's ability to do magic) were either in a different grade or a different classroom.  
  
Except one.  
  
Said exception was even now standing on the edge of the school green, the slight shift of her hips signifying she was resting her weight more on one leg than the other. Jaz couldn't help the small smile her lips tweaked up into at the sight of her.  
  
Coca brown skin, curly chocolate locks that fell a good ways past her shoulders, and soft brown eyes. Hands that seemed to always have a little bit of clay caught in their creases, gently tapping her leg as she waited patiently. A sweet soul by nature, no doubt about that.  
  
Alyssa. Brooklyn House's  earth elementalist.  
  
She turned as she heard Jaz approaching, a small smile on her face to match Jaz's own.  
  
"Jaz! How was practice today?" the brunette asked, watching as Jaz picked up her bookbag, opened it, and changed into her yellow flip-flops. The blonde had a pair of sneakers for school hours due to the dress code, her flip-flops for casual wear, and for cheerleading she went barefoot.  
  
"Nothing really interesting happened today, aside from Holly missing a flip and landing on her back. She also landed on one of her fingers and sprained it..." Jaz winced at the memory of her fellow cheerleader's black-and-blue finger.  
  
Alyssa flinched a little, her face showing sympathy for the person who had been hurt, even if she didn't know them. "Ouch. Will she be ok, Jaz?"  
  
She nodded as they made their way out of the school grounds. "Yeah, Holly will be fine. She didn't break the bone, so a cast is unnecessary, it just needs a couple day's rest and some ice. I told her the finger might swell and that the joints wouldn't allow movement in some directions until the sprain fully heals."  
  
"Ever the healer, huh?" Alyssa said, playfully bumping Jaz's shoulder with the heel of her hand. "Even outside Brooklyn House."  
  
"Well, there's been plenty of sprained fingers at Brooklyn House, considering how much we all play basketball," Jaz replied, a trace of mirth in her voice. "Enough about my day, how goes your art project? The bust of William Shakespear you started molding a few weeks ago?"  
  
Alyssa's eyes brightened at the mention of the clay bust she had been working on as they began walking back to the giant white mansion they had started to call home. "It's about halfway done, I've got his head shaped just right and the outline of his features down with a tiny bit of earth magic. Now I'm working on the details. I just hope I don't mess up on the mouth... again."  
  
Jaz adjusted the placement of her bookbag's strap with one hand and pulled her hair out of its ponytail with the other, swinging it over her shoulder as she patted Alyssa's shoulder reassuringly. "You won't. Last time, you were stressed out because of the semester tests. Now that they're behind us and you know you did well, you can concentrate properly," she said, encouraging her friend.  
  
It seemed to work, as the other girl's face brightened at her words, the worry wiped from Alyssa's face in one clean sweep. "Yeah, you're right Jaz. You know, the mouth can be such a pain even when I'm not stressed, you know? Between it and the eyes, you can accidently change the sculpture's expressed emotion from the one you intended and then..."  
  
As Alyssa started to ramble about how easy it is to mess up the facial expression of a sculpture, Jaz found herself slowly tuning out her voice and just focusing on the speaker herself. It's not that she intended to not completely listen to her friend's words or that she found them uninteresting, it's just that Jaz found herself looking at Alyssa in a way she'd never looked at her before.  
  
The way her dark brown curls bounced with each step along the sidewalk.  
  
How the noon sun threw her features into sharp relief against her cocoa skin.  
  
Her eyes closing slightly as she smiled at something she'd just said, eyelashes a hairsbreadth away from brushing her cheeks.  
  
It wasn't just her looks either. Alyssa was the one who always waited after school for Jaz's cheerleading practice to finish just so they could walk home together, even if she had to wait the whole practice. She was also the one who kept Jaz company during lunch and recess, listened when she wanted to talk about something new she'd discovered in following the path of Sekhmet, and encouraged her when she felt so down even cheerleading couldn't lift her spirits.  
  
Their friendship was never a victim of doubt by either of the girls. Jaz knew that for certain, yet what struck a chord of uncertainty in her was that she was pretty sure that "just friends" don't look or think about the other like she was currently thinking about Alyssa. Did it mean something?  
  
"...az? Jaz? Are you alright?"  
  
The blonde snapped out of her reverie and focused on what Alyssa had said.  
  
"Huh? Oh, sorry. I spaced out a little," Jaz replied, a little embarrassed that she'd stopped listening to Alyssa and her own thought train during the short period she'd accidently tuned Alyssa out.  
  
"Oh, no worries! I shouldn't have been rambling in the first place. Hey, there's a Starbucks around the next corner right? How about we stop there before heading home? I know how much you love Starbucks."  
  
Jaz smiled and nodded, breaking into a jog to keep up.  
  
She may not be sure how she felt about Alyssa.  
  
But at this point, did it really matter?  
  
This might be as good as it gets.

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno. I guess my intended purpose of this series is to see how the other Brooklyn House kids are impacted by the sudden changes in their lives instead of reading about just Sadie and Carter running around the world to save it. Not that I don't think Sadie and Carter are awesome, trust me, they are. It's just that it's sometimes good to see the others point of view as well. They had to go through some bad stuff as well.


End file.
